Making peace in gestational conflicts

Mary Anne Warren's claim that there is room for only one person with full and equal rights inside a single human skin ([1], p. 63) calls attention to the vast range of moral conflict engendered by assigning full basic moral rights to fetuses. Thereby, it serves as a goad to thinking about conflicts between pregnant women and their fetuses in a way that emphasizes relationships rather than rights. I sketch out what a care orientation might suggest about resolving gestational conflicts. I also argue that the care orientation, with its commitment to the significance of the partial and the particular, cannot be absorbed within standard, impartialist moral theory.     

Developmental psychology in the real world: A paradigm of parent education

Twenty years ago, William Kessen, Greta Fein and I developed and tested a model of parent education, a model which involved variation in curricular content, didactic approaches, and child outcomes–experimentally contrasted. Our experience yielded some valuable lessons about the extent to which researchers can influence parents' behaviour, and parents their children's development. In the present article I suggest that these lessons might be useful for researchers now as they were for us then. I present some observations about the research that developmental psychologists have done in the intervening two decades and suggest that we could learn much by using such a model of parent education to answer questions about the effets of parents' behaviour on children's development. Carefully done, parent education studies can yield valuable information about many of the questions raised in recent correlational research. Parent training research can suggest hypotheses that can be tested with data collected non-interventively and analysed in causal model analyses–and vice versa. What is more, because one reason for studying parent effects is so that we can offer guidance to parents about rearing their children, this design has a particular advantage; it is both the medium and the message.     

The utilization of genetic counselors within a newborn screening program

Genetic counselors have participated in the Michigan Newborn Screening Program on a contractual basis since 1988. Their role includes newborn screening education and training, newborn nursery site visits, and monitoring newborn screening in hospitals. Their impact has been to improve the quality of newborn screening services by reducing errors and increasing completion of data fields on newborn screening cards, improving hospital nursery cooperation and problem solving, and enhancing health department response to specific problems.     

Developmental sequences in the age of onset of disruptive child behaviors

Retrospective and prospective reports of the onset of disruptive child behaviors were analyzed in a sample of clinic-referred boys. The younger boys (ages 7–9 years), compared with the older boys (ages 10–12 years), showed the highest level of disruptive behavior and, judging from mothers' reports, had the fastest progression of onsets from less serious to more serious problem behaviors. Despite some overlap, developmental sequences in problem behavior within the domains of hyperactivity/inattention, oppositional behavior, and conduct problems were similar across the two age groups. This was also the case for developmental sequences of overt or confrontive problem behaviors and covert or concealing conduct problems. Sequences of the onset of oppositional behavior and conduct problems were validated through prospective data, based on the information from mothers, teachers, and boys themselves. The implications of the findings are discussed for the formulation of developmental pathways of behavior and the analysis of causal factors.     

Multilevel models in developmental psychological research: Rationales and applications

The armoury of statistical techniques has recently been enhanced with the multilevel model for longitudinal data. The present article explains the multilevel model for longitudinal data to the statistically non-sophisticated reader. It shows how the model relates to the five rationales of longitudinal research, as they were put forward by Baltes and Nesselroade (1979). In addition, it shows how the model matches Wohlwill's methodology of developmental functions. To elucidate the model further, three applications are given. The applications pertain to the development of children's sleeping duration during the first 18 months of life, the effects of early hospitalization on the daily frequency of crying, and the developmental relationship between social and solitary play.     

Minimizing the number of observations: A generalization of the spearman-brown formula

A new method for determining the minimum number of observations per subject needed to achieve a specific generalizability coefficient is presented. This method, which consists of a branch-and-bound algorithm, allows for the employment of constraints specified by the investigator.     

Influential observations in principal factor analysis

We propose a method for detecting influential observations in iterative principal factor analysis. For this purpose we derive the influence functionsI(x; LL ^T ) andI(x; ) for the common variance matrixT =LL ^T and the unique variance matrix , respectively, in the common factor decomposition =LL ^T + . A numerical example is given for illustration.The authors are grateful to Tomoyuki Tarumi and Atsuhiro Hayashi for their kind permission to use their software Seto/B for drawing Figures 1 and 2 and to anonymous reviewers for comments on the paper.     

Social anxiety and fear of bodily sensations in panic disorder and agoraphobia: A matched comparison

This study tests the hypothesis that social anxiety and fear of bodily sensations are associated with the development of agoraphobic avoidance behavior in panic disorder patients. Twenty patients with panic disorder were compared to 20 patients with panic disorder with agoraphobia, matched by sex and duration of disorder. The two groups did not differ on measures of fear and frequency of assertive social responses. However, the agoraphobics scored higher on measures of interpersonal sensitivity, depression, feelings of inadequacy, and hostility. They also reported higher fear of bodily sensations. Although definitive conclusions need to be postponed until prospective studies have been conducted, there is evidence suggesting that the development of agoraphobia in panic patients is associated with hypersensitivity to bodily sensations and interpersonal situations.This research was supported by Grant 560-268-009 of the Dutch Organization for Scientific Research.     

HUMANITY IN THE WORLD OF LIFE

Abstract. The position and role of humanity in the world of life is examined in the light of the ontological structure of life itself. This problem is approached by considering the possible units of life representing various modes of life phenomena. I argue that the only meaningful unit of life without interposing some special external conditions is "global life" framed in a star-planet system. Any other possible unit of life exhibited by various kinds of individuals is conditional in the sense that it would leave out an essential part as "co-life." The relationship between human being and the global life should be understood in this general scheme of individual and global life. It is emphasized, however, that human being occupies a unique position in global life in the sense that humanity can promote either a cancerous situation or a healthy higher-order enhancement of the global life.     

DISCIPLINING RELATIVISM AND TRUTH

Abstract. Imre Lakatos's philosophy of science can provide helpful leads for theological methodology, but only when mediated by the disciplines that lie between the natural sciences and theology. The questions of relativism and truth are used as indices for comparing disciplines, and Lakatos's theory of natural science is taken as the starting point. Major modifications of Lakatos's work are demanded as one moves from the natural sciences, through economics, the interpretive social sciences, literary theory, and into theology. Although theology may consist of Lakatosian research programs, it also includes programs of interpretation and programs for living. This conclusion must influence our definition of theological truth and our assessment of theological relativism.